


starlit semantics

by idaate



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: i forgot to write shirogane a birthday fic sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 07:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idaate/pseuds/idaate
Summary: [ MAJOR V3 SPOILERS ]Momota and Ouma hold a conversation up in space as the world beneath them crumbles.





	starlit semantics

The moment Momota’s rocket reaches it’s peak, the moment before it begins to tip and turn and kill him perfectly and absolutely, everything begins to move in bullet time. Well, everything except for him - he can reach out and touch the glass circle in front of him all perfect and normal, which he does, and on the other side he can see stars and stars and stars.

He’s well aware of the irony of only achieving his lifelong dream as a means to end his life instead of open up a new realm of possibilities, but he doesn’t even think it was his lifelong dream for very long anyways, so maybe it doesn’t matter. He can hear the execution music from outside his ship.

He leans away from the window and into his seat.

“Hello, Momota-chan!” says Ouma’s upside down face cheerily, and then, when Momota doesn’t jump back several feet in fear, “I thought that Mister ‘Ghosts Don’t Exist Shut Up Shut Up Dummies’ would have a stronger reaction to seeing a real live ghost! Or maybe it’s a real dead ghost? Since I’m _reeeeaaally_ dead!”

“Hey, Ouma,” says Momota begrudgingly. Ouma spins around right side up, now, and Momota notices his own purple jacket draped over the boy’s pale shoulders. Death didn’t seem to add any extra pounds onto Ouma, at the very least, and his build looks as fragile and as doll-likeas it had in life.

“You know,” says Ouma, as if reading his thoughts, “some people out there probably thought that you grabbed the very same jacket that I had been wearing when _I_ , well,” died, “and wore it to the trial. Isn’t that absolutely, positively _gross?_ It kinda makes me wanna puke. Who would wanna wear a jacket all covered in gore and guts and blood and stuff? It would be totally unsanitary, no matter _how_ many times you washed it over!”

“I, I fucking guess so,” Momota says, and Ouma sits cross legged in the air. There’s blood staining parts of the boy’s pants, the blood painfully stark against the white fabric. His little leg straps - useless as ever - float in the air like angel wings, even though Ouma is anything but. “Never gave it much thought. It’s not like I didn’t have fucking _spares_ in my closet, though. I’m not walking around for weeks on end in the same clothes.”

“ _You_ knew that, but _they_ didn’t know that!” says Ouma, and Momota wonders if he’s talking about the audience he claims has been watching them all or the children who had partaken in the trial. They’re all children. Ouma died a child. Amami and Kaede and Hoshi and Tojo and _everyone._ They all died as children.

Momota’s gonna die as a child, even if he lied about being one in order to get to space.

“This is fucked up,” says Momota.

“We’re both pretty messed up,” says Ouma, “in more ways than one. Like, I went,” Ouma slowly presses his hands together and makes a shchhhwwrrrrrp noise with his mouth, “and your lungs have had a lawnmower go through them, and _you_ agreed to kill _me_ because I _asked_ you to, because you _trusted_ me, even though I’m a liar, which is super duper weird--”

“Ouma, what’s dying like?” cuts in Momota, suddenly incredibly aware of how little time he has left, and Ouma’s face goes blank for a second. “I-- What was _your_ death like?”

“Painful.”

Momota blinks. “Is, that a lie--”

“Yeah, the economy is absolutely a _pain_ to deal with. I’ve been dead for, what, all of a couple hours? Six, seven? And belieeeeve me, ghost taxes are a _pain_.” Ouma throws his hands up in the air, pushing at the wall to begin to spin precariously in zero gravity. “Jeez, you think that everyone in the afterlife would have had things all figured out, but nope! There’s ghost taxes and ghost jobs and ghost life insurance, which is an oxymoron, but don’t worry! Momota-chan and I can have a _wonderful_ little ghost house together and we’ll live like that, a lovey dovey ghost couple! Since Harumaki-chan probably isn’t going to visit here anytime soon, if everything goes well.”

Momota’s already lost by the moment ‘ghost taxes’ flies out of Ouma’s mouth, covering his ears and grimacing, but he rockets back to reality when he says ‘lovey dovey couple’. “Wh, what the fuck?!” he sputters, and Ouma giggles.

“Momota-chan, you take things in-cre-di-bly seriously. You’re gonna have to learn to lighten up a lil’ bit, in the afterlife!”

“Is that like, heaven, or hell, or purgatory…?” Momota frowns. “I wanna say you went to hell but I, don’t fucking know shit anymore.”

“Aw, Momota-chan! It’s so sweet that you’d want me to hang out with you.”

“You sayin’ I’m the one more likely to go to hell out of the two of us?!”

“Well, out of the two of us, I was the one able to figure out things while you - you dumb numbskull! - just pranced around all willy nilly, so I know more, so I know which one of us is gonna go to hell!"

“But you didn’t figure out shit fast enough.”

“No,” Ouma says with a smile, “I wasn’t.”

“Also, I think you ‘pranced’ around a whole lot more than I did.”

“Mm.” Ouma giggles to himself. “Momota-chan, we should prance together in the afterlife! I can teach you how to dance with some skeletons and ghosts. Wanna learn the waltz? Or perhaps a tango?” He mimics some sort of Ouma-original dance in the air around Momota.

“Ouma, why does this,” Momota makes a vague hand motion, trying to keep his mind off of ghosts (shit is he gonna become a ghost, his greatest fear, that’s fucking poetic justice) and looks at the stars, “why does this sort of thing...interest you so much, I guess is what you’d say? I thought you were serious about enjoying everyone’s death and suffering and, and shit but...that’s.” He swallows, and Ouma looks at him, completely unamused. “That’s. A lie, isn’t it? I mean, your whole fucking mastermind spiel was a lie, and I can’t tell what about you _isn’t_ a lie. So.” He pops his lips.

“I guess,” Ouma says, shrugging as he follows Momota’s gaze, “it’s something to do with how life is a beautiful lie, and death is the ugly, disgusting truth. Or is that a lie, too?” He laughs. “Hey, Momota-chan?”

“What?” Bullet time is moving a little-less-slow-than-bullet-time now, and Momota coughs a little into his hand as the spaceship makes a 180 degree turn and now they’re pointed directly upside down. He doesn’t need to look to know the sticky feeling between his fingers isn’t mucus or spit.

“You got to say goodbye to everyone, right?” he says, and pushes against one of the walls of the spaceship to move a closer to the glass window, until his face is right up against it, looking at the stars and people (saihara) outside. “You’re happy you got the chance to do that? And they were glad that _you_ were the one they got to say goodbye to?”

Momota doesn’t speak for a very long time. It’s a barbed question, after all.

“Uw~aaa, unless - don’t tell me, all this time, Momota-chan had been an even _worse_ and more heartless person than I originally thought?! Momota-chan, how _could_ you--”

“No, I was,” Momota snaps, “I was fucking happy and shit to say goodbye to them.” There’s an awkward pause. “Thanks for that.”

“Anytime! Or, not, since you’ll be dead soon.”

Outside of the spaceship, the muffled execution music swells.

“Come on, Momota-chan!” Ouma says, holding his hand out as the world around them rushes faster and faster and faster, his jacket (or momota’s, rather) billowing out behind him in grand rolling waves like a cape. Momota wonders if his own jacket looks something like that. “Let’s go pay those ghost taxes. Unless, you want me to send you off with a kiss?” He flutters his lashes.

Momota grabs Ouma’s hand. “I’m good.”

Ouma laughs out loud, a different and more fuller laugh from his devious ‘nishishi’ and Momota’s world is covered in milk.

(his body rests on the ground in his own blood as a robot’s antenna ricochets off into the stars)


End file.
